The protagonist is a woman who takes tourists on boating trips in the Florida Keys. She entertains them with stories of her Indian past, mostly invented since she was orphaned at the age of nine. A look at the human need for a past.

In her memoir, Fowler details the beauty and peace she found on Alligator Point after years of heartbreak and loss, and the devastation and upheaval that followed the oil spill. It is, at its heart, a love song to the natural world and a cry of anger and grief at its ruin for the sake of corporate profits.

This first novel explores the stickily enduring bonds of love. Nine characters speak in alternating chapters: a reluctant psychic; a selfish, philandering husband; a sensitive, eccentric one; a finicky undertaker; a young soldier; an unhappy little girl; a Haitian migrant; and two widows, one merry, one grief stricken. This unlikely cast inhabits a narrative spanning 30 years. Some, like Soleil Marie, a sugarcane laborer, or Inez, who can't avoid...